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A Happy Art Room

I'm retired now, but I'd still like to share these views of my former classroom. Here's the color wheel table, made from a table I rescued a few years back. The new art teacher is taking good care of it!

My room always included a place to focus on famous artists, though my inability to stick to a schedule convinced me in my last years of teaching to change this board to "featured artists" which enabled me to change it whenever I wanted to, and to leave it up longer than a month if desired. The giant crayon pack was made by some 8th grade students many years ago. Their children have now since passed through my classes, and were proud to know their moms built the crayons!

As for the totem pole and window shade - I used yellow contact paper and permanent markers for the sunshine, and painted the rest of the shade. We could pull the shade down on rainy days and say "the sun is always shining in the art room!" It is still in the art room. The totem pole was given to an elementary teacher who was excited to adopt it for her classroom! I'm glad it found a good home, since I am running out of places to put things.

My 6th graders were sort of middle school, sort of elementary school, so they needed a special set of grading guidelines. Their first assignment was creating a "passport" where they recorded their thoughts and observations on each assignment/project completed throughout the year. I used the passport as a place to record their grades. With the Common Core requirements, the new teacher has kept the concept of the passports but has had to make it a much more specific grading tool. I'm glad I retired in time to miss dealing with the over-emphasis on assessment and data. I prefer to spend my time with kids MAKING ART!

22 comments:

Congratulations on playing w/ re-shaping your blog and I'd love to see more pics of your "Happy Art Room". I've been wanting to make some changes to my blog, you've inspired me to get around to it sooner rather than later.Curious what the "passport" is that the 6th graders have to "submit"?

Thanks, Jan. Someone left that table in the hallway as a "discard" in June 2009, and I rescued it, sanded it, and over the summer painted it, with a little help from a sweet 6th grade girl. I recently put a fresh coat of poly on it, and I hope the teacher who comes after me when I retire likes it too!

Fantastic Ideas and great atmosphere in your class! So colourfull and inventive and good to read you give very hounest reflections to everything. I'm very curious about how you see and think of pure drawing in combination with the regular lessons, like interfacing with the other program. Wish you a very good retirement time!! Love from Amsterdam

Maria, thank you so much! I'd be happy to help you as much as I can; best to do it by email. My email address is not on by blog or profile because of spam issues I had a while back, but if you want to leave your email address in a comment (I suggest you write out the words 'at' and 'dot' to prevent being spammed) I'd be happy to answer you.

Fantastic....you are a great help to me as I get ready to go back and get pumped up on Monday morning. Thank you for your insight and enthusiasm. Kids have been asking me to let them paint one of the tables...well now I will.

About Me

Hi, I'm Phyl and after 36 years as an art teacher, I am now officially retired, but that doesn't mean I'm done with art education. The truth is, I'm more involved now than ever before! I hope you'll visit me often as I share art lesson ideas, thoughts on art education, my own personal artistic and photographic endeavors, and tidbits about my family and the beautiful environment where we live.